Pockets Full of Stones
by Toffee Fox
Summary: Something goes desperately wrong when Atom and Cobalt are assigned a new mission together. Strong angst warning, with mentions of blood, self-harm, and suicide.


**The title comes from the song by Florence + The Machine.**

* * *

It was an accident. He kept telling everyone that. No one believed him. They didn't even believe that what happened, was what really happened. But it _did_ happen, and it was an accident. He didn't mean it.

He wasn't entirely sure he believed it whenever he told himself that, however.

They had been fighting. While on a mission. One should never fight with one's mission partners, certainly not while the mission was ongoing.

It had been a long time since Cobalt had been sent on an assignment. He had not been sent on an assignment by himself before, aside from the time that Atom had been believed missing. This time was no different; he was to accompany his younger brother on this particular trip.

The details of this assignment did not matter much. What happened while they were on the assignment, did.

He couldn't remember what, exactly, they had fought about, but he knew that it was something petty, something trivial; they had been having a lot of arguments like this lately. Atom was becoming overworked and overstressed; it seemed that not a day went by that there wasn't a problem that the city felt it needed to throw Atom at to fix it. He was tired, and high-strung.

Cobalt had been becoming strangely quiet. He didn't talk much anymore, like he used to. He didn't laugh anymore, either, and seldom so much as smiled. He was becoming withdrawn, and no one quite knew the reason why. Atom had wondered idly if they were treating him well at the school he went to. He had absolutely no idea at the time; could not even begin to fathom the very least of his older brother's worries.

Because of the recent changes in both of their behaviors, their relationship with each other and their other siblings became rather strained. They fought a lot about the littlest things, and it upset Uran and Titan to the point where Uran would just up and leave the room, taking Titan with her (he had not yet mastered learning to walk).

Atom knew that he was destroying the bonds he had with his friends and family, but he felt he could do little to stop it, being the Ministry's new dog, as he was, lately. He didn't understand why Cobalt was behaving the way he was, however. He could see that he was growing apart from his family, and whatever friends he thought he must have, as well; but he did not see him trying to fix it at all. No, he just withdrew further and further into himself, ignoring the world around him. Atom thought him selfish; after all, surely there was nothing in _his_ life that could compare to the problems of his own.

He wept when he found out.

After all, as many problems as he'd had in his life, he'd always had at least one good friend to bear it with him. And he was pretty popular nowadays.

He could never understand.

The mission started routinely enough. After receiving their orders, and confirming their positions, all was quiet; not a word was spoken between them. Atom had been feeling bad for the way he'd been snapping at his loved ones lately, so he decided to take the time to apologize.

He received no reply.

A bit disconcerted, but not entirely put off, Atom tried again, opting this time for a bit of small talk. Cobalt merely gave a noncommittal grunt in reply. Atom would say something else, and would receive the same response; this went on for several minutes, until Cobalt finally gave an actual response, that had the unfortunate side-effect of setting his brother off: "That sounds stupid."

Atom, who had been becoming increasingly frustrated by his brother's lack of coherent response, and apparent lack of interest, was at first, taken by surprise. This didn't last long, though, as it quickly gave way to annoyance. After all, as far as he was concerned, at the time, it was far more intelligent that half of the odd things that came flying out of Cobalt's mouth with every other sentence spoken (or at least, when he still spoke; oh god why couldn't he remember what he had said).

In a moment of poor decision-making, he decided to inform Cobalt as such. For the first time in a long time, his blank expression contorted into something like anger, or annoyance.

He sniped back, and it all went downhill from there. Reno tried, many times, to call them and check the status of the mission; he was ignored. Arguing turned to yelling, yelling into shouting, shouting into shoving, shoving into screaming at each other in their rage, exchanging heavy blows.

It came to a head when Atom brought out some of his artillery; being an older model, Cobalt did not possess the same firepower that his brother had, and no one had bothered to retrofit him with anything of that sort. Atom leveled his digi-laser at Cobalt, who dodged fairly easily: in his ire, Atom's shot went fairly wide. He fired again, and again, and although it became an increasingly close call with each shot, Cobalt managed to avoid it each time, his voice raised in increasing alarm. Atom didn't notice; he never noticed anything important about his own brother, it seemed.

Something inside him seemed to have snapped; all of his stress from being used as a go-to fix-all by both the police department and the Ministry, all of the harassment he received daily from both his supposed "fans" and the media, his strained relationships with all of his family and friends- it all just snapped, and rushed into his head and through his finger, as if someone had released the floodgates, or the entire dam just burst its walls and flooded the surrounding spaces. He kept firing; Cobalt got grazed a good few times, his panicky voice cracking just a bit. But he still dodged most shots, much to Atom's frustration.

He stopped firing for a moment; Cobalt slowed to a stop as well, just for a a moment, a pleading tone in his voice and fear in his eyes.

Atom's cannon engaged. Cobalt's eyes widened; his face visibly paled. He had no time. As light on his feet as he was, he could never move swift enough.

Atom did not miss.

* * *

They didn't believe him when he finally told the truth. At first, he said that he didn't know what happened- at the time, it was true; he fell out of his rage and into sudden shock when he'd realized what he had done. He couldn't come to terms with it. It did not just happen. It simply did not exist.

But then reality came back to him; slowly at first, in little trickles, then in a great flood of blurred memories and intense emotions. He nearly shut down from the strain of it all; as it was, he was left with a pounding ache between his ears for the next three weeks. He scarcely noticed, though, over the empty, sickly feeling hole he could feel inside himself, eroding away slowly at his innards.

He had asked for multiple scans, but they all came back clean- there was nothing wrong with him that they could find. He didn't believe that, though. He knew it was there, and he knew that it was slowly killing him, from the inside out.

When he finally told Ochanomizu the truth, he paused for a moment, as if not knowing what to say, or how to react; when he finally spoke, he told him that he must be confused. He couldn't have possibly done it, after all; he loved his brother, and would never do anything to hurt him. Atom said that he knew that, but that it _did_ happen. He felt hollow when he said it was an accident, that he didn't mean it. Ochanomizu just shook his head at him; there was, after all, a much more reasonable explanation, for both the accident, and for Atom's confusion, a convenient little excuse that related to the mission, and had seemed much more likely than the truth. Ochanomizu said that he must have been feeling survivor's guilt; he was simply overreacting because he felt as though he failed his brother by not protecting him.

Well, he certainly wasn't all wrong on that part. He _had_ failed; he had failed his brother in every possible way. His guilt, though, did not stem merely from the fact that he had survived, and his brother had not; after all, he never thought that he would ever have to protect Cobalt... from him.

He shut himself away after that. They didn't try to send him out on missions for the first two weeks; he refused any and all demands from both parties when they inevitably started flowing in again. He wouldn't see his friends; he refused to go to school; he wouldn't even talk to his remaining family. He just stayed in his room, almost never leaving if he could help it. People grew concerned, but he didn't care; he simply ignored them.

He began having nightmares. They were noisy, disjointed, and unsettling at first; as time passed, they became more and more disturbing, as well as more and more coherent, to the point where he began to wonder if they were really only dreams anymore.

It was during one such episode that he first heard the voice that would soon be his undoing.

* * *

"_Brother..."_

_ He froze. All of the scenery of the previous dream seemed to disintegrate around him; while he ordinarily wouldn't have missed it, he would give anything to be back there now._

"_Brother... brother..."_

_ He turned, slowly. He found that he was in a hazy, white space, with nothing around him, and seemingly nothing supporting him, at least nothing he could see. His eyes fell onto the only other figure around, standing by its lonesome some distance away- or so it seemed; it was difficult to judge distance in this dream-state- and froze there, unable to look away even the slightest bit._

_ His back was turned; he moved not a simulated muscle. A sort of fog swirled around his torso, obscuring it from view; from this distance, he seemed pristine, unmarked... whole._

"_Brother..." He flinched. He hadn't been expecting him to speak at that moment- or had been hoping he wouldn't._

"_Brother... you are not still angry with me... are you...?" he spoke again, the worry noticeable in his voice. His voice had an almost ethereal quality when he spoke; it had something like an echo to it, a resonance. His gut clenched in anguish; he hadn't thought that he'd be worried about **that**, of all things..._

"_N-no... I could... I could never... stay angry at... y-you." His own voice had an echo to it, but not in the same way; more like the echo of speaking in a large and open, slightly enclosed space- like a canyon, or a- a cathedral. They never did hold a proper funeral, did they...?_

"_Oh good, I'm so glad..." The explicit relief in his tone, the way he sighed and seemed to relax his tense posture, struck him like a blow that he knew was not intended. He surely deserved it, anyway._

"_I didn't want you to be mad at me. I... didn't mean to cause a fight. I was just hurt and- tired. Just... so tired..."_

_ He swallowed a lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to prickle._

"_I'm sorry for the way I'd been acting. I was having problems at school- just silly stuff, you don't need to worry about it- but I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I'm sorry..."_

_ The burning feeling in eyes persisted; no matter how many times he swallowed, the hard lump in his throat would not seem to stay down._

"_Atom..."_

_ There was an audible pause. He turned slightly, as if meaning to look back over his shoulder at Atom, without turning all the way to face him. If he were him, he wouldn't want to face himself, either. He didn't want to look at himself, regardless._

"_Don't be sad-"_

_ No._

"_-it wasn't your fault-"_

_ Please._

_ He turned his head the rest of the way. His eyes were a blank, empty white; his face was tired-looking, and a little sad, but kind. He wore the smallest of smiles. The swirling fog was beginning to thin..._

"_Atom."_

"_No."_

"_Atom, listen to me-"_

"_I can't-" He choked up. Speaking was becoming difficult, not to mention seeing... his eyes were hot, and everything was curiously blurry..._

"_Atom." He turned his body to face him fully. The mists about his torso were beginning to clear..._

"_I'm sorry I made you angry. And even though there's no need for it, because it was all my fault, I forgive you for what you've done. You don't need to say anything to me..." The mists parted finally, revealing a gaping hole in his chest; burned and melted wires poked through the edges, and he could just smell the burnt plastic and silicon. "... I know you didn't mean it."_

He woke with an anguished howl that could be heard miles around.

* * *

He stood at the edge of the precipice, a strange smile playing on his face. He felt very heavy. That was good. The cords were nice and tight, too, so they should hold. He would stay down.

Sparks jumped from the deep gashes in his skin; a strange, dark ichor dribbled out of some of them, so much like human blood. Most of it was already gone, though; boy, was he ever feeling dizzy right now.

No one would ever find him. No one would ever know. He wouldn't hurt his family or friends anymore, that was for sure.

He tipped off the edge, soon meeting the water as he crashed into it and it rushed all around him, taking him and calming him. It would be alright.

Into the deepest, darkest recesses, he hoped to sink. In a thousand years they'd never find him.

He'd say sorry to his brother when he saw him.

He wouldn't have very long to wait now.


End file.
